Factors and Identity
The ways in which someone may be authenticated fall into three categories, based on what are known as the factors of authentication: something the user knows, something the user has, and something the user is. Each authentication factor covers a range of elements used to authenticate or verify a person's identity prior to being granted access, approving a transaction request, signing a document or other work product, granting authority to others, and establishing a chain of authority.
Security research has determined that for a positive identification, elements from at least two, and preferably all three, factors should be verified. The three factors (classes) and some of elements of each factor are:
- the ownership factors: Something the user has (e.g., wrist band, ID card, security token, software token, phone, or cell phone)
- the knowledge factors: Something the user knows (e.g., a password, pass phrase, or personal identification number (PIN), challenge response (the user must answer a question))
- the inherence factors: Something the user is or does (e.g., fingerprint, retinal pattern, DNA sequence (there are assorted definitions of what is sufficient), signature, face, voice, unique bio-electric signals, or other biometric identifier).
Read more about this topic: Authentication
Famous quotes containing the words factors and/or identity:
“The economic dependence of woman and her apparently indestructible illusion that marriage will release her from loneliness and work and worry are potent factors in immunizing her from common sense in dealing with men at work.”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)
“During the first formative centuries of its existence, Christianity was separated from and indeed antagonistic to the state, with which it only later became involved. From the lifetime of its founder, Islam was the state, and the identity of religion and government is indelibly stamped on the memories and awareness of the faithful from their own sacred writings, history, and experience.”
—Bernard Lewis, U.S. Middle Eastern specialist. Islam and the West, ch. 8, Oxford University Press (1993)